


scarce to be counted

by prufrock



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Childbirth, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hospitals, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark at MIT, Parent Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Endgame, Pregnancy, Tony Angst, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 02:47:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20332780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prufrock/pseuds/prufrock
Summary: A eulogy by way of collected memories, curated by James Rhodes.





	scarce to be counted

**2020.**

The Duchess of Sussex has finally been seen in public wearing pink. This is a big deal, because while the official royal mourning protocol only dictates that dark colors be worn for thirty days following the death of a non-monarch family member, Meghan Markle has made the striking and admirable decision to dress in navy and black for all public appearances for the last year, and her choice to step out at Wimbledon in a blush pink Club Monaco dress may mean that she’s finally moving on from Harry’s tragic disappearance. 

Rhodey knows all of this, and a lot more about the royal family, the line of succession minus Charles and Harry, and the etiquette of mourning wear for British royalty, and the sartorial significance of blush pink, because Tony’s been reading _ People _ aloud to him for the last twenty minutes. 

“Did you know,” he asks, “that royal family members have to bring mourning clothes with them every time they travel just in case someone dies?” 

“I did not,” Rhodey says. 

Tony nods. “True story.” He flips through the pages a few more times, and throws the magazine back on the table with a little huff. 

It’s 10pm now, and they’ve been in this room for about four hours. Pepper, they say, is resting—her contractions are still coming, but things seem to be stalling, or something, because they stopped walking her around the halls and asking her to count, and Tony and Rhodey got sent to a little waiting room with teal chairs that don’t let you get comfortable no matter how you lounge and a TV playing reruns of Rachael Ray. Tony’s Xanax kicked in around 6:30, which helped, but Rhodey can see he’s getting antsy again; he’s drumming his fingers on his knees, casting his eyes around for something to take his mind off what’s happening (or not happening) down the hall. 

“I met him once,” he remarks to Rhodey, or maybe to himself. He’s fiddling with the fold of his pant leg, smoothing out the crease like it’s offended him personally. “Me and Happy, back in ‘07, Camp Leatherneck.” He takes a deep breath, holds it for eight, and lets it out slowly, tapping off the seconds on one hand. “Anyway. He had a sunburn, Jesus, flaking like a fucking spanakopita. Nice guy, though.” 

There are footsteps in the hallway, then, somebody walking towards the waiting room like they mean business, and Tony leaps to attention, but the shoes make a left and turn down the hallway. They’re alone again in the silence, with Rachael Ray mouthing something about chicken thighs at them from the mute TV. Tony sits back down, not hard but slowly, gingerly, like he thinks he might crack if he moves too fast. 

“She’s doing fine,” Rhodey tells him, even though he knows it’s not doing any good. “It’s her first baby, it takes time. Women do this every single day and we’re in the safest hospital in the world.” But nowhere’s safe for Tony anymore, and Rhodey knows that, New York least of all. Even with Happy down the hall, monitoring the whole twelfth floor, and guys on every exit and entrance, Tony’s been on high ultra red alert since they got into the city, and even with the Xanax he’s breathing too fast, too hard. Rhodey’s shocked he made it here at all without a damn heart attack. 

Rhodey’s seen Tony break down before, sometimes spectacularly, but this year has been something different. For the first month after it all happened—after the world fell apart and Tony fell out of the sky with another fucking hole in his chest—well, for that first month, Rhodey thought they might not really be getting Tony back. But Pepper knew what to do, because she always does. She sat up with him, she cooked for him, she hired a therapist and a dietician and a personal trainer and a whole extra security detail. And all of it helped, a little, but the thing that helped the most, the thing that really made the change, was when she told him the big news. Rhodey still remembers the day Tony showed up, beaming and red in the face and clearly just off a crying jag and more present than Rhodey had seen him in weeks, and announced that he was gonna be, for real, a _ dad _. Rhodey brought him inside; they had a couple beers to celebrate, and Tony planned out Pepper’s hospital bug out bag on the spot. 

It’s under his chair now, a preposterously overstuffed Gucci duffle, and Rhodey knows the exact contents because Tony’s gone over them a hundred times since they got here: three days of clothes, phone cables, an iPad and a Kindle, five pairs of headphones, a miniature portable pharmacy of painkillers and sedatives, a cashmere blanket and matching sleep mask, socks and more socks, some lipstick, a digital breast pump, and fourteen power bars. Tony counted them all. Twice. 

“Sometimes,” Tony announces to thin air, “sometimes, in labor, the placenta covers the cervix, so the baby can’t get out.” The sentence hangs in the silence, and Rhodey knows he’s imagining his daughter drowning in darkness, trapped and helpless and so far out of Tony’s reach it terrifies him. Rhodey can _ see _ the black hole blooming in Tony’s eyes. 

“She’s fine, Tony,” he tells him. “If anything was going wrong, they’d have told us already. Your kid’s just stubborn, that’s all.” He wonders if he could get someone in here to prescribe Tony something to make him sleep. He knows Tony would never take it. 

“Tell me more about Meghan,” he demands, sitting up a little straighter in his chair, nudging the empty coffee cup on the table and wishing he had about a dozen more. Turns out, trying to run an air force with fifty percent manpower turns an 80-hour work week into 160 hours, and it’s been about ten months since Rhodey slept through the night. He saw his doctor last week, and found out that his life expectancy if he doesn’t slow down and eat more leafy greens is probably about five years short of what it was a year ago. Rhodey can’t say that the information means very much in this new world. 

Tony sighs, rubs his hands over his face, and snags _ People _ off the coffee table again. “She’s got stops in Malta and Rabat this week,” he reads, “with the Foundation. A source close to the family says Meghan hopes that her example of resilience will show everyone that we can still move on, even after—” He cuts himself off, flips the pages, and tosses the magazine down. “I’m gonna take a nap.” 

Rhodey watches him drag two chairs together into a stunted bed, and thinks it’s a good thing Tony’s short. He looks at the clock; nearly five hours now. Rhodey might just take a nap himself. Settling noisily on the chairs, Tony pulls his hoodie up over his head and mumbles, “Wake me when things get exciting.” 

“I will,” Rhodey promises, and closes his eyes. 

**1986.**

What Rhodey was hoping for, when he signed the paperwork to become a residential advisor for his junior year, was a little extra money and another line on his resume, something to point to when recruiters started asking about his leadership experience. Mainly, though, it was the extra money thing. 

What he didn’t picture, not at the time, was sitting up all night in Mass General while the rich kid from his floor who made Rhodey’s life hell all semester before turning up blue and pukey in his suitemates’ bathroom gets his stomach pumped. 

And yeah, Rhodey could go back to the dorm at this point, but it’s almost seven and his body’s telling him it’s not worth it when he’s got his final in Principles of Autonomy and Decision Making in less than twelve hours. Better to power through, grab some coffee in the cafe downstairs and start studying now. It wouldn’t be the first all-nighter he’s pulled. Or even the weirdest, for that matter. 

When Rhodey called the Stark residence from a payphone in the lobby a few hours ago, he got a secretary, but she assured him she’d pass the message on, so he figures his work is just about done here. Tony’s finally being moved upstairs from Emergency, so Rhodey figures he’ll check in one more time and make sure the kid’s settled before he takes off. That’s the checklist for medical emergencies. Call the parents, check on this kid, sign it off so somebody else can make it their problem and Rhodey can brush up on the Principles of Autonomy and Decision Making before 3pm. 

But when he gets to the room, it’s obvious Tony Stark isn’t gonna make things that easy for him, because the kid is up, stumbling around the room in a space camp t-shirt and yellow socks, muttering to himself under his breath as he kicks at the sheets hanging off the bed, squinting around him like he’s looking for something. There’s a massive bruise on his arm where the IV was, and Rhodey can see the loose tubing spooled across the bed, blood speckled on the old sheets some poor housekeeping person is gonna have to scrub out later. 

“Hey,” Rhodey inquires loudly, “what the fuck?” 

Tony spins on the spot, almost loses his footing, and straightens up to glare at Rhodey. “What are _ you _ doing here?” His voice is so hoarse it cracks on every other word, so it doesn’t command quite as much authority as Tony probably intended. 

“I’m making sure you don’t get in trouble,” Rhodey says. “So, you know. My job.” 

Tony blinks. “I’m not in trouble. Where’d they put my pants?” 

“Get back in bed,” Rhodey says. 

“I have a _ test _ ,” Tony shoots back, like he’s telling Rhodey the sky’s falling, like somebody’s life hangs in the balance if Rhodey doesn’t find a nurse right the fuck now and convince her to give this kid his Dockers back. He’s breathing hard. “I have a test at _ noon _, just get me my fucking pants, will you?” 

“Oh, sure, let me just do that, cuz I forgot, I’m your butler,” Rhodey says. This is the kid who came to Rhodey in the first week of classes and asked where he should leave his dirties for the maid to pick up; Rhodey hasn’t let him forget that. But he’s serious now, so serious it looks like he might actually cry, which is exactly what Rhodey doesn’t need to deal with. Why Howard Stark thought he could send a fifteen year old to MIT just because he happens to be a genius is lost entirely on Rhodey. 

“Sit down,” he tells the kid, “and I’ll go see if anyone knows what happens to your pants.” 

Tony sits immediately, like he’s been waiting for the order, like he’s so tired he might just fall over if he doesn’t, and shoves his hands underneath himself so Rhodey can’t see they’re shaking. “Thanks,” he says, a little belatedly, but it’s okay; that’s the first time all year Tony’s said those words, so Rhodey is gonna consider it progress. Shit, Rhodey hopes the kid makes his exam, if it means this much to him. 

“I’ll do my best,” he promises. 

Rhodey asks at the nurse’s station about the missing pants, which produces a plastic bag with a pair of slightly stained khakis, a belt, and a set of dorm keys. Rhodey thanks the lady and heads back down the hall, but when he gets to Room 218, he pauses: Tony’s talking to someone, and something in his tone of voice makes Rhodey not wild about stepping into the conversation. 

“I _ didn’t _ ,” he’s saying in that scratchy whine, “wait, you’re not _ listening _ to me, I didn’t—” Tony’s voice drops out, but Rhodey can’t hear the other person, so, okay; he’s on the phone. 

The other person talks for a long time. Rhodey taps his foot and looks at his watch. 

“I’m sorry,” Tony finally says, and Rhodey’s jolted out of his boredom for a minute by how scared the kid sounds, like he’s swallowing himself with every word. “I was stupid, I promise, I’ll pass, I’ll do it.” There’s a pause. “_ Sir. _” 

So. The secretary passed the message along. 

A few apologies later, Rhodey hears the plastic clatter as Tony hangs up the phone, and counts to a respectful thirty before taking the last few purposeful steps towards the door and into his room. The kid’s sitting on the bed still, his back to Rhodey this time, and he’s _ small _, even for fifteen, Rhodey thinks, looking at Tony’s hunched shoulders. Rhodey clears his throat, gives Tony another last chance to wipe his nose and face, and walks over to the bed. 

“Jesus,” Tony mutters when Rhodey drops the bag beside him. “About _ time _.” 

“Sure thing,” Rhodey says. “What’s the test on, anyway?” 

“Design of Electromechanical Robotic Systems,” Tony mumbles, and he has to pause twice just to swallow. Rhodey’s gonna get him some throat drops on the way out of here. “Then numerical computation at 6.” 

Rhodey raises his eyebrows. “Better get dressed, then.” 

**2020\. **

They’re into the ninth hour. A few minutes ago, a nurse came in to explain that Pepper’s sleeping for the moment; her contractions are still coming, but they’ve slowed a little. This baby’s taking its time. Everything’s still going well, she assures Tony, and answers each of his increasingly accusatory questions: no, Pepper’s not in any danger; no, it’s actually normal for a first labor to take this long; yes, the baby’s still alive and doing fine. She repeats that a few times, for which Rhodey’s grateful: _ the baby is fine. _

So Tony’s back to pacing around the room, chewing his fingernails, and tearing the pile of magazines apart word by agonizing word. By the time he’s amassed a small collection of ransom notes on the carpet by his feet, Rhodey’s getting antsy himself, so he drags Tony downstairs to the cafeteria. Before they can leave the twelfth floor, Tony has to give Happy special instructions, and make a circuit of the floor himself to make sure everyone is where they’re supposed to be. Rhodey won’t let him wake Pepper up, but he does let him stand in the doorway for a minute, just breathing. 

Just when Rhodey’s about to tap his shoulder and tear him away, Tony turns. “Okay. Coffee.” 

They sit in the center of the cafeteria, sipping terrible coffee, a few tables off from a group of night-shift interns laughing raucously about a story involving a pitcher of iced tea and a specimen tube. Tony doesn’t even blink in their direction, just drinks his coffee and ignores the danish Rhodey got him. Rhodey’s still not used to this new quiet Tony. 

“The baby’s fine,” he reminds him, and Tony nods, distracted; he’s thinking about something else, maybe working on a problem. After all this time, Rhodey’s never completely sure what’s going on in there. 

The clock on the far wall creeps past 4 A.M. Rhodey finishes his coffee. They’re onto hour ten. 

**2008.**

“We should do this on your day off sometime.”

The fact that the nurse returns Tony’s smile is generous, but, to be fair, she’s got her fingers inside the open hole in his chest, nudging out particles of dead skin and congealed blood and wiping down the uneasy meeting place between his raw wound and the smooth, alien metal lodged against his sternum. Rhodey still can’t look at it without feeling sick, but he’s not gonna let Tony realize that. Not right now. 

“No, really,” Tony’s saying, and Rhodey can hear the breathless buzz of panic underneath his voice. “This is lovely, this is—uh—the most intimate thing I’ve ever done, and, really, read the tabloids, that’s saying something, so—ah—so what do you say, should we see if it’s got the same spark on the outside? I’m easy.” He looks across the room to Rhodey, nods in his direction. “Ask him.” 

“Tony, play nice,” Rhodey says. “You really want to stay on her good side.”

Tony sniffs and drops it. The nurse finishes dabbing at the wound and bandages Tony up, layering gauze on gauze and plastering Tony’s chest with layers of tape, then pulls him up so he can tug the front of his robe closed again. Tony flops back against the pillows, rolling his eyes, and gives her a thumbs up. 

“Can I tip you?” he asks. “You’re awesome.” 

She shrugs. “Feel free,” she says, and then she’s gone again. Tony immediately starts shifting around on the bed, trying to find a comfortable position, which Rhodey has learned is impossible to do when you’ve got a three-inch hole in your chest with an electromagnet that army intelligence still doesn’t know the history of planted between your ribs. Rhodey’s figured this out, and, honestly, he could have told Tony before they got here, if he’d wanted to know, but Tony’s stubborn, and he keeps scooting his ass around on the mattress like he’s sure if he just balances his torso a little differently he’ll be able to make it through the next hour without another morphine bump. His hair’s sweaty again, stuck to his forehead; he’s overdue for a sponge bath. 

“I’m bored,” he announces. Rhodey sighs and picks up the deck of cards sitting on the bedside table. 

“Best 44 out of 87?”

**2020.**

They try to play rummy in the waiting room, but Tony can’t focus and Rhodey’s tired and losing makes Tony grumpy, so they play a few rounds of go fish and Tony goes back to lie down on the couch. He’s stretched out with his legs dangling over the far arm when the nurse comes back. 

“She’s awake,” she says, and Tony’s rolled off the couch and sprinted for the door before she can finish: “She wants to see you.” 

Pepper is sweaty and tired and so flushed her freckles are drowned out, but Rhodey looks at her and looks at Tony looking at her and knows exactly what people mean when they call pregnant women _ radiant _. She waves Tony over for a kiss, pulls him in close and doesn’t let him go for a few long moments. 

She breaks away when the next contraction hits, shuddering so hard Rhodey can see her shift on the bed, her face tensed in pain. “_ Fuck _,” she breathes, and Tony stares at her, outraged. 

“I thought you were getting an epidural,” he says. Pepper shakes her head hard, puffing in and out. 

“I told you,” she says between gulps of air, “I’m doing my deep breathing.” 

“_ Pep _,” Tony says, but Pepper yells on the next contraction, and Rhodey suspects she’s leaning into that to shut Tony up as much as to process the pain. After a moment, she falls back onto the pillows, breathing hard and cursing. 

“This baby,” she tells Tony, “is a pain in the ass.” 

“So like me.”

“You said it,” Pepper points out, “not me.” 

Rhodey settles down in the chair on the far side of the room while Tony sits down on the edge of the bed, one hand caught up tight in both of Pepper’s and the other stroking her hair. The sun’s coming up outside, and Rhodey watches as the first rays catch on Tony’s unwashed hair, then on Pepper’s cheek, and sink into the rumpled blue folds of the sheets, warming the room as Pepper yells and cries and breathes and sweats and laughs and tells Tony not to tell their daughter she called her an asshole before she was even born. 

Around 8 o’clock, she lets Tony call for an epidural. 

**2023.**

The Au Bon Pain in the lobby of Westchester Medical Center is out of turkey chili. Actually, they’re out of almost everything, scrambling to feed a suddenly doubled herd of visitors and staff. The girl behind the counter apologetically offers Rhodey a sprouted grain breadstick. 

“We’re getting restocked tomorrow,” she says. 

“It’s cool,” Rhodey tells her. It’s hard to explain to this poor kid, whose manager’s been yelling at her since this morning, how astronomically little it matters to him. 

He eats the breadstick, which tastes of starch and disappointment, on his way back to the main entrance. He can’t remember why he wanted it at all, but it seemed like the thing to do. Like the thing he’d tell someone else to do, someone floating through time like him, if he wasn’t the one—well. 

His shoulder aches, but it’s barely a distraction; the Advil’s already kicking in and he’s used to a little soreness after a fight. The doctors wanted to keep him overnight, run some more tests and make sure the bruises didn’t affect his old injuries, but Pepper’s already at home with Morgan and Rhodey needs to be there. This is the first night, this is step one in the process, when they find out what this is all gonna be like, and Rhodey needs to be there, that’s a non-negotiable. It’s what family is about. 

So he’s on a schedule, or that’s what he tells himself, because that’s the only way he’s gonna get through this: put it down in the day planner and take it one step at a time. Even so, he’s walking too slowly on his way to the entrance, taking turns he knows aren’t right, meandering stubbornly into an unnecessary scenic route through the hospital halls. Time feels like it’s skipping, jerking him from one spot to the next without his conscious effort to move between them. _ Shock _ , he notes. _ Denial comes next _. 

He finds himself standing in the vast, overheated atrium by emergency, staring into the open waiting room, clearly bending its capacity to the needs of the moment: every chair is full, and Rhodey can see the far wall is lined with people sitting on the floor. It takes him a minute to realize he recognizes the person at the far end of the line, because his head’s down on his knees and the blue and red are more concrete gray at this point. 

The kid looks up as Rhodey comes over, and, yeah, he’s been crying all this time. His face is mottled and red, swollen around the eyes; Rhodey’s reminded forcefully of the afternoon in ‘88 when Tony found out just how allergic he is to pineapple, and that, _ that _ memory shakes him unexpectedly, like a shot to his core. He’s stuck on the spot for a minute, pulled apart in time while Peter Parker scrubs at his face with the already-filthy sleeve of his suit. 

“Hey,” Rhodey says. 

“Hey, Colonel Rhodes,” Peter croaks back. 

“Why aren’t you back there?” Rhodey asks, nodding back at the emergency bay. “Nobody’s seen you yet?” Peter shakes his head; Rhodey notices he’s hugging one arm a little closer to his body, and if Tony was here he’d be tearing the place apart to get that arm set, he’d—_ but he’s not _ . _ Shut that down. Save it for later. _

Peter’s explaining. “Nobody called? And, uh, I didn’t know—cuz they’re busy, there’s a lot of people here tonight, I guess, and a while ago there was an old lady, I think she was having a heart attack, so, uh, I just waited, I guess?” 

Rhodey sighs. “Come on.” 

He puts his hand out, and he sees the hesitation. And he gets it. They haven’t talked much. Peter was Tony’s project, Tony’s protege, Tony’s kid. Rhodey ran into him a few times, fought next to him a couple times, and he heard just about everything there was to hear about him, because Tony talked about him constantly. He wouldn’t shut up about him, in fact, until everything changed and Tony _ did _ shut up for five entire years, walked deep into a well of silence and stood at the bottom so long that every time you looked in his eyes you could see him drowning, and _ that _, that’s what this has all been about. That’s why all of this happened. Rhodey wonders if Peter will ever know that. 

Rhodey looks down at Peter Parker, sitting in the middle of this crowd on the cracked emergency room linoleum with his battered suit and his dust-choked hair and allows himself, just this once, the terrible clarity of the knowledge that if he got to choose, this kid and Tony would be trading places.

And maybe it’s the knowledge of how completely outraged Tony would be at him for that thought that makes it easier to shake his hand out again and pull Peter up from the floor. The kid’s light—Rhodey could probably carry him if he needed to, but he doesn’t. Instead, he leads Peter out of the blinding waiting room over to triage, where he makes the polite but firm case that this is Peter Parker, this kid’s a member of the Avengers team, and he’s been injured and needs assistance now, not later, and Stark Industries is footing the bill. He’ll work out the paperwork with Pepper tonight. 

Peter’s crying again when they wheel him back, and Rhodey doesn’t know what to say to make things better—Tony’s the dad, Tony’s the one who didn’t want kids because he was scared he’d fuck it up, Rhodey wasn’t built for this kind of thing. He pats the kid’s head, and gives him a tissue, and tells him that Tony was proud of him, which makes him bawl even harder. Rhodey feels bad. He feels empty. He feels like he’s floating above himself, watching himself do a job Tony would do a million times better. 

He waits till Peter’s stitched up and shuffled upstairs into recovery, and he makes the calls to make sure his aunt’s on the way from Queens, and then he leaves. Outside it’s cool and dry, the perfect spring night. Rhodey thinks he can hear birds. They’ve been singing all day, even after the sun went down; they’re just as confused as everyone else. Within a week or so, Rhodey figures, instinct will take over, and the evenings will get quiet again, but for now the whole landscape’s hectic with wordless voices. 

He’ll drive up to the cabin tonight, and see Pepper. Tomorrow, he’ll come back and help with cleanup, and in his case that probably means another hundred reams of paperwork, because that’s nobody else’s strong suit. He can see the next few weeks taking shape: briefings on top of briefings, probably a press conference or two, and somewhere in the middle of all that they’ll need to plan a memorial, but all of that can wait. It has to wait. _ One step at a time _. Tonight, he’s headed upstate. 

He gets on the Sprain Brook Parkway, switches to Taconic as he leaves Valhalla, and heads up along the valley under the hanging cloud of dust spread out around the place where everything ended. He’s almost to Poughkeepsie before the stars come out. 

**2020.**

Tony and Rhodey are kicked out of Pepper’s room while they administer the epidural. Tony’s been banished for about two seconds when he takes a deep breath and bolts for the nearest bathroom to throw up. 

Rhodey goes down the hall to the vending machine near reception, and grabs a ginger ale. When he comes back, Tony’s leaning against the wall, his hands over his face. He hears Rhodey coming and straightens up, wipes his nose. “Don’t tell Pepper,” he says flatly. 

“Not a chance,” Rhodey promises. Tony takes the ginger ale and toasts him. 

“Here’s to fatherhood.”

**2018.**

“Rhodey?”

“Nmmhm?”

“_ Rhodey. _” 

“Yeah?” 

“The kid.”

“I know, Tony.” 

“I don’t feel good.”

“I know.” 

“Rhodey, I’m serious, I’m not—” He’s banging on his ear again. Rhodey reaches over and pulls his wrist away; Tony continues like nothing happened. Rhodey squints over at him through the lamp light, but Tony’s not looking at him. He barely ever is these days. He’s smacking his ear, trying to knock out the echoes of whatever dream he just fell out of, and his face is screwed up, and Rhodey, who’s been sleeping three times as much as Tony has, is _ so tired _ he almost wants to just let it go and let Tony do what he needs to do. 

He doesn’t, of course. He gets up off the the sleek and surprisingly soft couch that he and Pepper have been trading off since Tony came back, and he sits down with Tony on the bed. 

“I’m fine,” Tony says before Rhodey can do anything, “no, I’m not, I’m just—”

“Yeah,” Rhodey says, “I know.” He takes Tony’s hand, the one he’s using to beat the memory center out of his brain, and pulls it away from his head. It’s dry and scaly, still scabbed from when Tony stripped down and scrubbed every inch of his arms and chest for literal hours till Pepper found him at 4am bleeding into the sink. He still feels dirty, Rhodey knows, because he’s caught Tony scrubbing and clawing at his hands and arms more than once since then, like they’re covered in dirt he can’t get off. 

When he came back from Afghanistan, and then again when he came back from New York, he had trouble sleeping, had nightmares in the daytime and nighttime both, but both times he powered through, found something in the real world to distract him from the shitshow playing out in his brain a hundred times a day. But this time there’s nothing to distract him. 

Rhodey still doesn’t know what happened up there, still doesn’t have the answers to all the hundreds of questions he’d ask Tony if things were different, but Tony told them the basics and Nebula—who’s mad about everything and frank to a fault; Rhodey likes her—she filled in some of the rest. Three weeks in deep space, food and oxygen running low, and before that, Thanos, who snapped the universe in half and did his damn best to kill Tony, and Rhodey’s lying if he’s not pretty proud when Nebula says that asshole threw an actual _ planet _ at Rhodey’s best friend, and the stubborn idiot crawled right out of the dust. 

_ I’m proud of you _ , he wants to tell Tony now, but he suspects Tony wouldn’t want to hear it. Instead, he holds Tony’s hand tight and tells him nobody’s mad at him, nobody blames him for what happened, he did okay. “You did _ good _.” 

“Shut up,” Tony says, and Rhodey can tell he means it. 

“Okay,” he says, trying to keep it light; Tony’s hand is stone in his. 

“I killed that kid,” he whispers. Rhodey’s heard this sentence at least ten times since the ship landed in their backyard, and each time it wrenches his heart and his stomach together, every time he hopes he can say something to make this time the last. 

“That’s not your fault,” he says. Tony doesn’t answer, and with every second Rhodey hears his words dissolving into weightlessness; it doesn’t matter what he says. 

He’s about to push back when Tony wrestles his hand free to wipe his nose and his cheek, and Rhodey realizes he’s not just breathing hard, he’s crying. It seems so useless, suddenly, to fight Tony on this, because the semantics don’t matter. Tony went up with Peter, he came down without him, and Rhodey could find the exact right sentence and it wouldn’t change that, not the guilt or the anger or endless what-ifs or the fact that Tony, who’s been talking Rhodey’s ear off for the past two years about Peter Parker, is gonna _ miss _ that kid till the day he dies. 

So Rhodey doesn’t fight. He lets Tony lean on him, pulls him a tissue from the box by the bed, and idly ruffles his dirty hair as he talks about whatever comes to mind—work, Star Wars, what they had for dinner, the periodic table, anything to keep Tony’s mind bouncing from thing to thing long enough for sleep to take over. It does, eventually: Tony nods against him, and his rough hand goes slack in Rhodey’s, squeezing a couple spasmodic times as he dips in and out of consciousness. Rhodey keeps talking till he’s sure Tony’s out, and then very carefully shifts his weight off his shoulder and down onto the bed. 

He rolls back onto the couch to catch a few hours himself, and leaves the light on so Tony knows he’s not alone when he wakes up. 

**2020.**

Rhodey falls asleep in a chair in the waiting room around 8:30, and wakes at 10 o’clock to sunshine boiling over his right side and Tony, smocked in a speckled blue gown and vibrating slightly, jerking his shoulder back and forth like he’s trying to pump water. It’s not the gentlest awakening Rhodey’s ever experienced.

“Hey,” Tony says, and he’s grinning so hard it’s actually slurring his words, “I’m a dad now, I think.” 

Rhodey sits up. “You think?” Tony shakes his head, still beaming, still tugging at Rhodey’s arm. 

“I mean, I _ am _ . I mean. There’s a baby. There’s a baby, Rhodey, she’s a _ girl _.” 

Tony leads him down the hall, past Happy’s guys and then past Happy, who’s bouncing on his heels by the door to the birthing suite; he holds up his hand for a high five as Tony passes. Pepper’s lying back in bed, flushed and smiling as wide as Tony, and from the way he dives for the bed it’s like the roll of blankets in her arms has some magnetic pull on Tony, who’s already putting his hands over Pepper’s like he’s helping support the baby, like he wants to know that even if Pepper dissolved there’d be someone there to catch her. 

“Hi, Rhodey,” Pepper says softly. “Meet Morgan.” 

She’s tiny and wrinkled, a grumpy little golden raisin of a baby with an incongruous tuft of Tony’s dark hair. While Rhodey watches, she yawns expansively, her whole miniature body writhing with the effort, and Pepper and Tony exchange a look of awe, like their baby’s just invented something completely new and world-bending. 

“Hi, Morgan,” Rhodey whispers. “You got a cool mom.” Morgan snorts, her hand flapping indignantly in the soft blue blanket. “And your dad’s okay, I guess.” 

The joke is lost on Tony, who’s just staring at Morgan in dizzy bliss, and for the first time in months Rhodey can really see the old Tony, the one who went up in the sky last year and never quite came down. He’s sitting right here on the bed, anchored now to the world by the baby in his arms, cocooned in happiness, in stupid, incalculable love. Rhodey knows he’s gonna be an amazing father.

It’s been four hundred and twelve days since Tony came back; four hundred and thirty-six since the world fell apart. Every day, Rhodey wonders if everything they’ve worked for in those hundreds of days and hours is going anywhere, or if everyone is just treading water till the next big, terrible thing takes them all under. But this, right here, this is worth it: an island in the storm; a sure port in uncertain weather; a safe harbor in the middle of a hard journey. 

Maybe, he thinks, everything is going to be okay. 


End file.
